Fun day on Monty

I pulled a solo trip to Monty yesterday, I needed some freezer meat. The church fish fry cleaned me out. I drifted from 7:30 till 4:00pm in depths from 90 feet to 6 feet. I ended up catching 26, plus scbackwoods gave me 6 eaters he caught. I threw back the larger fish and kept about 20 eater sized fish for the freezer. The bite was fairly consistant, most fish were caught in 45 to 55 feet of water. Herring seemed to be the bait of choice, but I only had a few. They did hit on thumb size pieces of gizzard shad, just not as fast.

The weather was beautiful, the water was in the mid 70's. I did note a lot of limbs, leaves and scum in the water down the lake, below the big island. I also noted a lot of geese on the islands, watched a goose chase a gander all over one island. Must be a lot like humans.

God must have been looking out for me. About 8:30 one of my drift socks came untied and sunk in 70 feet of water. About 5 minutes later I noticed one of my rods loaded up and acted funny, not like I was hung and not like a fish. I started in with it, but it felt wierd all the way in. Turned out to be the best catch of the day, my drift sock. Man, those 36" socks put up a fight! It kept feeling like it was rolling, like an old blue does, but not running towards the bottom.

Way to go Steve! That's a good number of fish for Monty. I do have a request, tho - next time you're out there, I've got a drift sock out there in about 80' of water that maybe you could ketch for me? :wink:

That does sound like a good day at Monty. I've got great memories of going there with my dad and uncle as a kid/teen. I remember where we put in but the ramp seemed kind of short. Do you guys have a ramp there you recommend for a pontoon (21 ft)? I'm going to try and get back down there before too long.

Pat, I'll be glad to catch it, if you tell me what kind of bait to use for it. Maybe some magic scrimps?

Scott, the 99 ramp is a good ramp to use. My buddy launches his 26 foot toon there all the time. Thats the ramp at the very top end of the lake, between the recreation lake and the main lake. you can get to it by turning off of hwy 215 at the Montecello Mart and then left at the ramp sign.